Spark within Perdition
by ClockworkQuill
Summary: Years after the war has ended Narcissa finds out the boy-who-lived is being mistreated, and as his closest blood relative alive and not in Askaban it is her duty to look after him. To strengthen her claim, Narcissa gets ahold of the nearest male magical relative, Mr. Rajan Patil. Together the Malfoy and Patil families raise Hari Potter.


AN: Welcome y'all to my first Harry Potter fic. I wasn't really planning to write this but I'm super exited for it. I hope y'all enjoy it.

As usual it is crossposted to AO3 under the same title and author name and you should expect slow to irregular updates.

Quick warning for implied/mentioned child abuse and domestic violence this chapter. /AN

Freak is young. Freak knows that much. Freak is tiny, especially compared to Dudley and his friends. Freak spends Freak's nights in a tiny dark cupboard below the stairs and Freak's days cleaning and cooking under Aunt Petunia's sharp gaze. Neither is pleasant but it's better than when Uncle Vernon is home in the mornings and evenings. Aunt mostly just screeches at Freak, unless Freak burns something in the kitchen. Freak doesn't need to do anything more wrong than existing to make Uncle angry and his anger leaves pain that aches and lingers much longer than a frying pan to the head.

Freak doesn't know any world beyond this. The cupboard and anger and pain and chores and Freak wonders if they'll every be good enough or if this will be Freak's world until like Freak's parents Freak just stops being.

Freak doesn't know what to do when Freak can feel angry adults saunter down the street heading towards Number 4 Privet Drive. Their anger isn't like Aunt and Uncle's, it is something that makes the air around them dance, and strikes out against anything, everything, without the adults having to utter a word. It isn't loud, or hunched shoulders, and red faces. It isn't threats of violence and tremors of stomping feet that shake the whole house. But Freak can feel it, can see it, can almost taste it just the same and its both comforting and terrifying in its familiarity, even if Freak can't recognize it as anything besides anger, danger.

Freak was outside, gardening that day. Caring for the roses that got Aunt so much adoration and praise from the neighbors. Freak hid behind the bushes to watch the adults that radiated strands of anger. There were two of them. One was a dark man, dark like Freak, with black hair and skin that Aunt would call dirty with a sneer. The anger that lashed out around him was a red that was bright like blood near his body but faded to the brown of a scab when it lashed out. The other was a woman with hair that was both black and blond. Not blond like the Dursleys' brownish yellow but blond like morning sunlight, white with the barest hints of yellow and orange if you looked at it just right. Her anger was more wild. It lashed out constantly, almost hungrily like a fire spreading over new, dry wood. Only it was more black than red and it reminded Freak of something Freak didn't quite remember. Occasionally the man and the woman glanced at each other not quite wearily, like they weren't used to each other's company even as they stood together in this.

When they get close enough Freak ducks into the garden shed. Life is easier, just a little less painful, a little less loud when Freak isn't seen, isn't noticed. And Freak certainly doesn't want the attention of these adults whose anger he can feel and see from three houses away.

-o-

Narcissa is shocked when Severus fire calls her one afternoon instead of Lucius. She was never close with the man. She had spent more time in school with him than Lucius ever had, more early mornings studying in the common room, sometimes together, more often then not just being comfortable with the others' presence on the other side of the room as they focused on their own school work. They had never really talked the way either did with Lucius, and if it weren't for her husband and Draco she wouldn't have been surprised if they had stopped talking entirely after she graduated Hogwarts, much less after the war.

"Are you looking for Lucius?" She asks. She can't think of any other reason for him to call her directly.

"Actually, I need to speak to you about a Black family matter."

"Oh," she says. She sometimes still forgets that somehow she is the last of the Blacks free to live her life. With Siri and Bela in Askaban and Andi cast out from the family, torn from the family magic. With her Aunt Walburga - the hateful bitch that she was - so recently gone and buried. It was odd and overwhelming and especially so recently after regaining just of enough to begin experiencing the world beyond her bedroom once again. As the youngest sister of a line that wasn't set to inherit the last thing Narcissa had expected was to be the last of the Blacks.

Severus waits, more patient than usual from where he knelt in the fireplace for several moments. "May I come through?"

It takes several more moments before Narcissa responds with a "Oh, yes. Please come in."

Severus has never seen her so ruffled before, and he knows the words he has to say will only shake her more. "Perhaps sitting down and some tea would be best," he says as Narcissa begins to pace. The anxiety coming off her in waves is unlike anything he has felt since fall 1981. "And perhaps Lucius should join us, if he is available. I'm afraid the news I have will affect him too." Affect the whole wizarding world, or at least all of wizarding Britain he neglects to say.

So they sit, and they wait for house elf delivered tea in Lucius in anxious and not quite awkward silence.

-o-

Severus wasn't bothered by not being very close to his coworkers. There was an odd air between him and them. They had been his teachers and they all remembered the early years of the war when he had been an angry teen that found his voice in the angry and violent minority lashing out at the rest of the wizarding world. He had seen what happens when the muggle and wizarding world collided and found refuge in those that had agreed with his views in this even if they had taken more an more extreme stances that he sided with less and less. It had been late in the war when Severus went spy and the only ones at Hogwarts who knew more that Dumbledore had supported him, vouched for him, were other Order members like Minerva. His existence since the war that been both lonely and too full of people. Very little had changed since the days he wandered these halls as student rather than professor really.

Minerva was one of the few teachers that reached out to him in matters besides work. It was both comforting and not to have her mostly quite, sometimes feline companionship. So when he came into his office to see his fire a light and a cat curled up on his desk the annoyance and fondness bubbled up inside him as one. "Minerva, what brings you here today?" School had just started again and he didn't have the patience for her cat-like antics. It is days like these that Severus regrets taking Albus' offer to teach even more than he regrets telling the Dark Lord about that thrice-damned prophecy during the war. Not that he had any choice in either matter.

Minerva stretches lazily before hoping off his desk, shifting into her human form mid-leap. "It's about the Potter boy," she tells him.

Severus sneers. Of all things he does not have the energy to deal with spoiled brat of the man he hated. Probably just as much of a bully as his father. Just as much of a bully as he had become, some deep buried part of his mind nags at Severus. He shakes the thought away with a shrug of his shoulders.

Minerva cuts him off before Severus can speak. "I know you have no fondness for the boy. But Severus, I've ne'er seen a house elf treated so poorly as those muggles treat that boy. I thought Albus was correct when he said it was best for the boy, even though I was sure they were worst sort of muggles. Maybe he was right at the time, but he isn't anymore. His place is with the Blacks and you know it perhaps better than I. Tell the Malfoy's he is at a place called Number 4 Privet Drive in Surrey. Get him out." Without another word Minerva left the office as Severus' world crashed down around him yet again.

-O-

Narcissa and Lucius had taken turns trying to keep the other from pacing as they tried to absorb the news Severus had left them with at first. At the time Narcissa was glad the toddler had escaped Aunt Walburga and Uncle Orion's grasp. She hadn't blamed Siri from turning his back on his parents. Not really. It had been hard enough with the pair of them as Uncle and Aunt and heads of the family. She didn't blame Andi from leaving the family either, though sometimes she did blame her for leaving herself to fill the marriage contract to the then Malfoy heir. And even though she had come to love her husband over the years, she could barely stand her Draco being in his reach, let alone letting the man be anywhere near the boy who lived.

Lucius's worry was more the reputation and danger it would bring to his position if and when the Dark Lord returned to find him harboring the boy-who-lived than it was for the child himself. He couldn't decide if it would be the best or worse choice of his life.

Not that it mattered. Not that it was his choice that led any sway. To take custody of the boy they would need both a male and a female relative to stake a claim, together. As a Malfoy his claim was to distant to matter, especially after the war. He still held power in the Wizengamot and in the Ministry, but it was not enough. Not enough when Dumbledore stood like a beacon to the Light proclaiming the Boy-Who-Lived lead a lie of a life happily in hiding. Away from the wizarding world. Away from the birthright not even the Dark Lord had succeeded in taking from him.

They needed another. Someone else to come together with them in this. No many how many hours both had spent looking they hadn't been able to find a close enough claim for someone on their side to step up in this. No, the closest claim they could find they had to take and prey that one family wouldn't need to fight each other for the boy, would not need to pit the boy family against family. That wouldn't do anyone any good, much less himself, his family.

"Ha!" Narcissa shouted in triumph. It had taken her nearly five days and four sleepless nights and she finally found it. A connection, a claim to the boy that wasn't dead or imprisoned or continents away.

"Who is it my dear?"

Narcissa took a deep breath, hiding the shudder at the endearment before looking up to her husband's quicksilver eyes. "The Patils."

-O-

Freak shook behind bags of fish and blood meal, and soil as the shed creaked open. The adults still burnt and crackled with something but it wasn't anger anymore. It was something more akin to how Aunt approached cousin, but less overwhelming, less suffocating. At first the shed had seemed like a good idea, a good place to hide. Like Freak's cupboard. But now Freak had to muffle pants of anxiety. There was no where left to go, no where left to hide.

"Hullo Hari," the dark man says with a tilt to his words that Freak has never heard before. It reminds Freak of something almost, but it isn't clear enough a memory to do more than tug at Freak's mind. It doesn't help Freak calm down.

"It's good to see you, Hari" the woman says tenderly. "You were just a baby last time I saw you."

No Freak wants to say. It doesn't make sense. These people being kind to Freak. Almost gentle. Freak wants it almost more than it terrifies Freak. Freak doesn't like being hated, but Freak knows what it is like to be abhorred and what Freak feels coming off these adults is so different from that it makes Freak's skin itch and Freak's messy hair stand on end. Freak wants to go back to Freak's cupboard. The cupboard is safe. The cupboard is Freak's. The cupboard is the only thing Freak has and it is comfort and darkness and quiet and there aren't strange adults whose existence slides over Freak's skin like tingly tentacles and it feels so wrong and Freakish and comforting and Freak doesn't know what to do, how to act how to feel. Freak can feel the tear start to fall down Freak's cheeks and Freak knows that always end in pain but Freak can't do anything but huddle into the corner behind foul smelling bags of fertilizer and wish for it all to end. To be alone and back in Freak's cupboard, alone with the spiders and the dust motes and the darkness.

"It's okay, it's okay little one. You're safe now." Freak can eventually hear over the presence of the two adults in the small shed as the woman fished Freak out of the corner and into her gentle arms. "You're safe now little Hari. I won't let anyone hurt you any more."

"Neither will I," the man said as they exited the shed. "Neither of us will let anyone hurt you again."

-O-

They had agreed to meet at a neutral location at first. To introduce Hari to both of his new families, his new siblings all at once. But looking down at the little boy cradled in her arms Narcissa doubted that plan was the best idea now. He looked little more than a toddler, a starved one at that. Even with what Severus had told her, even knowing how poorly her husband treated their house elves it was worse than she dared to expect. So much worse. She could feel his hips and collar bones pressing out against thin brown skin as he shook and cried himself to sleep in her arms. The boy didn't even seem to recognize his own name. The fear that poured out of him tugged at her heart, and his obvious need for a healer raged inside her. There was only so much she would be able to do for him. She hadn't practiced in years, was still in training when that first miscarriage had left her broken inside, had made her work an empty soulless task and soaking up new knowledge a near impossibility.

Mr. Patil has been pacing beside her. Waiting for his family with as much uneasiness and much more eagerness than she awaited her husband and Draco. She wanted to care for, to raise this child as much as her son. She already loved him more than she believed possible. But the boy had already been through so much and bringing him into her house, with her son and with Lucius filled her with dread. She hadn't been able to protect Draco from her husband, how would she manage with this broken boy?

"I think you should take him tonight." Narcissa says, breaking through the other's anxious and angry Hindi muttering.

"I thought we had agreed going with you for now."

It has seemed like the best as they made their plans. It would be harder for people to interfere, to take this little child again at Malfoy Manor. It would be more quiet, with just the small little family of three in a house meant to hold dozens. A better place to heal. She didn't want to - couldn't really - admit she was terrified of what would happen if her husband had free range around the boy with no eyes but hers to see. She was relieved every day that he'd rather take things out on her than their son, but she worried this little boy wouldn't be so safe. He wasn't blood, he wasn't Lucius' own. Of what would happen if he decided to prey on his fear instead of her own.

If she can't escape, the least she can do is protect this little boy.

She knew it couldn't work. For the claim to work she needed to care for the boy as much as Mr. Patil did, needed to have just as much space in his life. But she wanted so much better for the boy than her bit of the world. She did as much as she could to protect Draco, would take him away if she could. But her little son was heir Malfoy and Lucius' claim was stronger and she couldn't bare to leave him alone even just as leaving this boy with another would tear at her. She knew. She knew the moment she took the trembling boy into her arms. Felt her magic surround him. "I know. I still think it's best."

Mr. Patil hardly knew the woman he stood next to, but he could hear the sadness in her voice. He could already see the love and care in her eyes as she held the skeleton of a child, as she rocked him in his sleep. He never thought he would feel sympathy for the woman, never imagined that she might be trapped in her fate just as much as the famed boy-who-lived that lie broken in her arms, his survival lauded and celebrated even as the wizarding world had stuck their heads in the sand and let the boy be beaten and bruised into this terrified shell of a child. He hoped someday she would be just as free as they were trying to free the boy who pulled them together. Free to live a life without fear. Without the weight of expectations people would thrust on them both for a past they had had little enough sway over.

He knew he lived in a new world than he had a week ago. Like that night in 1981 everything had changed in a blink of an eye, all because of this child and two old men who saw their way as the best way, the only way and would do anything to get it.

-O-

Freak woke up at the sound of two young girls yelling. "Papa, papa." Narcissa could feel him startle and stiffen in her arms, but didn't know if his unease was in being held or the sound of screaming children as the Patil twins dashed across the field from the other side of the park.

Mr. Patil caught his two daughters, picking them up and spinning them around in a way Narcissa envied. She hadn't been able to pick up Draco since he was only days old. Could barely even hold him some days when Lucius had thrust him into her arms. Her strength had been returning but not enough to be able to hold her own child, almost six now, in her arms.

He carried the two girls over with ease, one girl on each hip. "Padma, Pavarti. This is your cousin Hari. I told you about him, remember?" Both girls nodded seriously, looking at the boy with curiosity and wonder.

Narcissa ran her hand through the little boy's hair. He looked up at her, eyes still wet. "Hari, can you say hi to these lovely ladies. They're your cousins."

Hari squirms and turns towards the twins with wide eyes. Cousins were bad Freak knew. They hunted and hurt and laughed. But these girls looked nothing like Dudley. They looked like Freak, with long braided hair and dark skin. The woman had told Freak to say hello to them but Freaks weren't supposed to talk. Maybe they were freaks too, was it okay for Freaks to talk to other freaks? But Freak knew better than to ask, but Freak was supposed to follow orders. Freak didn't know what to do.

The girls nodded to him, smiling. "Hi Hari," they said together.

Freak mouthed the words, trying not to shake, but he made no sound. After a moment he curled back to the woman and snuggled against her breast again. She was warm. Freak liked that. Freak had never felt so comfortable with another person before. The tingly feeling that surrounded the woman felt warm and comfortable and gentle and soft. Like the blanket Dudley got draped with around Christmas time and Freak only ever got to touch when the weather got warm and it was time for the blanket to get laundered and packed away and put in the attic. Freak didn't know being close to a person, being touched, could feel so good and Freak never wanted it to stop.

The woman went back to stroking his hair. "Hari, another cousin is going to come meet you soon. My son Draco. He's a bit older than you, and sometimes you're going to live with me and him and my husband Lucius and Draco will be like your big brother. And sometimes you're going to live with those two girls and their parents and they'll be like your sisters. Okay?"

Narcissa didn't really expect an answer. The young boy had barely made a sound yet. But he nodded against her breast and nuzzled closer against her. It reminded her of Draco when he was still young, still breast feeding. She wondered.

Mrs. Patil wandered over to her, care and sadness and respect in her eyes. "Rajan says you wanted to send him home with us for the night. Are you sure you wish to part from him so soon, the two of you seem to have taken to each other well. I wouldn't want to -" She is interrupted by a crack across the park and the way Narcissa stiffens at the sight of her husband unnerves her.

"So this is the boy," Lucius says as he saunters towards his wife, strong hand on his young son's shoulder. Mrs. Patil didn't miss the longing look the blond boy shot the two girls playing with their father as he was stilled closer to the two woman and the young boy in Narcissa's arms. "Doesn't look like much," he says, looking at the small boy asleep in his wife's arms. "Are you sure that's the right child? He might as well be a toddler."

Narcissa's voice is both strong as soft. "He's the right one," she says. Not bothering to look up at her husband. "Draco, my dear, do you want to come meet your cousin?"

The boy looks up to his father before stepping up to his mother's side. With a little help from Mrs. Patil she sat down on a bench, Hari still in her arms. Draco climbed up next to his mother, peering down at the small boy in her lap. Father was right. He looked more like a baby than the child Draco was. He looked between the hooded eyes of his father and the loving eyes of his mother. Draco would be the bestest big brother he decided. Even if it angered his father. His mother had never looked at anyone but himself with such love and tenderness before. Draco wouldn't let father take that away from her too.

"Well," Lucius said with impatience. "Wake the boy up so he can meet Draco and we can go back to the Manor."

Narcissa looked up at Mrs. Patil's pleading eyes, missing the way Draco shifted to be between his father and the sleeping boy. Mrs. Patil opened her mouth to speak, but Lucius spoke over her.

"I don't have all day Narcissa."

Narcissa reluctantly shook the boy away. "Remember Hari when I said your other cousin Draco would come soon. He's right here. Do you want to say hello?"

Lucius scoffed at the gentle way Narcissa treated the boy, but was ignored.

Freak peaked out over the warm women's shoulder. A blond boy with hair that was as white as it was gold smiled at him waving. "Hello Hari."

Freak slowly pulled out his hand to wave back. There was something Freak liked about the boy, the slight tingles he saw coming from the boy, silvery grey like boy's eyes. Freak wondered why the warm women and the dark man and all these children kept calling Freak Hari. Freak had never been called anything other than Freak before.

"There, Lucius said sharply, looking at the Patils that had all gathered around his wife and son and the boy. "Its time we got home now Narcissa. You aren't used to such long days. Come,"

She wanted to scream. She didn't want to hand the boy over, wasn't sure she could. Lucius was expecting the child, Hari, her Hari, to come home with them and she couldn't tell him no, couldn't stand to let go of the boy, but the way he had acted only made her fears for Hari greater.

"Now, Narcissa. Draco."

"We will meet you and Hari at St. Mungos tomorrow." Mr. Patil, Rajan says, looking right at Narcissa, then Lucius, before turning back to Narcissa. "Ten yes." He left no room for a it to be a question.

"Yes," She says. "Tomorrow morning." It's all she can say before Lucius near drags Draco away before apparating, Narcissa moments behind them.


End file.
